South-Central Kentucky

[Senator Snowstalker]

It seems that, as far back as I've bothered to check (at least since 1944), this area has voted strongly Republican, even when KY as a whole goes Democratic rather easily. Is it like Eastern Tennessee, where there was a historic pro-Republican viewpoint in the area due to opposition to secession?

[MilesC56]

Well, as far as as eastern Tennessee goes...

I read somewhere that people there generally weren't slaveholders, so they were never sympathetic to the Democratic party; as opposed to strongly Democratic western and middle Tennessee, where slavery was much  more common.
I guess the Republican party became entrenched in eastern Tennessee and now the state as a whole is trending that way.

[Senator Snowstalker]

I knew that; is it a similar story in South-Central Kentucky and the Ozarks?

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

It would be really cool to have maps of the secession referendums... I know TN rejected secession twice before the third vote betrayed the union.

Here is the best map I could find, though it does not include any info about Kentucky:

[MilesC56]

Here's another slavery map:



In KY, it was most common up by Lexington and Louisville and in the west, extending out of Nashville.
I guess the eastern coal counties, like those in southern West Virginia, have always been Democratic anyway.

That kinda just leaves leaves the south-central KY...

[Sibboleth]

I guess the eastern coal counties, like those in southern West Virginia, have always been Democratic anyway.

They weren't coal counties then.

Generally this kind of thing depended on who moved their and where from.

[bgwah]

It's been a Republican stronghold since Lincoln, and Whig before that. I always just figured it was a similar story to Eastern Tennessee.

[Vasall des Midas]

I guess the eastern coal counties, like those in southern West Virginia, have always been Democratic anyway.

They weren't coal counties then.

Weren't they also Republican until the UMW came, or is that just true of the Southern part of the Kentucky coal country - immediately abutting the ever-Republican areas, of course, and swung back very heavily to the R's of late?

[freepcrusher]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

[ModerateCoward]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

No. Don't try drawing comparisons between ET and Vermont. ET is more like WV without the unions. They might have not wanted to secede, but the are still racist and were eventually able to reconcile their differences with the south.

[Sibboleth]

I guess the eastern coal counties, like those in southern West Virginia, have always been Democratic anyway.

They weren't coal counties then.

Weren't they also Republican until the UMW came, or is that just true of the Southern part of the Kentucky coal country - immediately abutting the ever-Republican areas, of course, and swung back very heavily to the R's of late?

I seem to remember that they were pretty variable. Logan county was very Democrat, I can remember that much. I think McDowell was Republican, at least for a time.

[Senator North Carolina Yankee]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

No. Don't try drawing comparisons between ET and Vermont. ET is more like WV without the unions. They might have not wanted to secede, but the are still racist and were eventually able to reconcile their differences with the south.

You do realize that at one point, Vermont elected people like this. It hasn't always been a progressive paradise. It was a Republican bastion that would elect anyone they put up. As such comparing the them in a previous period would have been appropriate as Vermont likely shared the views of most rural areas regarding such matters. Not MS style mind you, but not unlike what you would find in the rural midwest for instance. 

[rbt48]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

Also, unlike Vermont, eastern Tennessee didn't experience a huge infusion of Jewish people from Brooklyn, NY (like Bernie Sanders, for instance).

I think of south-central Kentucky as not a particularly traditionally Republican area.  For instance, Russellville and Bowling Green were, for a time, Confederate "capitals" of Kentucky.  (By the way, Kentucky never had a vote on succession as the legislature was pro-Union and never authorized such a vote.)  You have to go further east to Somerset and London to find yourself moving into always Republican southeastern Kentucky.  Check out returns from Jackson County, KY; typically >90%  GOP.  It is true that the coal mining counties of southeast Kentucky did become Democratic in the early 1930s, like Hazard and Pikeville.  But much of the area retain their voting patterns that go back to then end of the Civil War, like eastern Tennessee and isolated parts of western NC and western VA.

[ModerateCoward]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

No. Don't try drawing comparisons between ET and Vermont. ET is more like WV without the unions. They might have not wanted to secede, but the are still racist and were eventually able to reconcile their differences with the south.

You do realize that at one point, Vermont elected people like this. It hasn't always been a progressive paradise. It was a Republican bastion that would elect anyone they put up. As such comparing the them in a previous period would have been appropriate as Vermont likely shared the views of most rural areas regarding such matters. Not MS style mind you, but not unlike what you would find in the rural midwest for instance. 

Vermont had a decent demographic shift between 1960-1990, 15% growth of population per decade.

[Senator North Carolina Yankee]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

No. Don't try drawing comparisons between ET and Vermont. ET is more like WV without the unions. They might have not wanted to secede, but the are still racist and were eventually able to reconcile their differences with the south.

You do realize that at one point, Vermont elected people like this. It hasn't always been a progressive paradise. It was a Republican bastion that would elect anyone they put up. As such comparing the them in a previous period would have been appropriate as Vermont likely shared the views of most rural areas regarding such matters. Not MS style mind you, but not unlike what you would find in the rural midwest for instance. 

Vermont had a decent demographic shift between 1960-1990, 15% growth of population per decade.

So drawing comparisons between VT and East TN is acceptable then, in certain contexts?

[Χahar]

Appalachia was (and is) economically separate from the rest of the South.

[Lloyd Bentsen's Ghost]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

Read Albion's Seed. That book does a great job of explaining the different subcultures of white American society.

Vermont white people = descendants of Puritans from southern England; came to America feeling called to build a "city on a hill"; very Hamiltonian in outlook; favored a strong central government to promote morality (think the Salem witch trials), and later, in our more secular age, social justice and economic equality

East Tennessee white people = descendants of Scots-Irish farmers from Northern Ireland and northern England; came to America because they didn't have anything going for them in Britain; very Jeffersonian in outlook; suspicious of government, which they viewed as a vehicle for rich, powerful people to impose their will on them (by taxing them too much and trying to take their guns away)

[Progressive Realist]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

Read Albion's Seed. That book does a great job of explaining the different subcultures of white American society.

Vermont white people = descendants of Puritans from southern England; came to America feeling called to build a "city on a hill"; very Hamiltonian in outlook; favored a strong central government to promote morality (think the Salem witch trials), and later, in our more secular age, social justice and economic equality

East Tennessee white people = descendants of Scots-Irish farmers from Northern Ireland and northern England; came to America because they didn't have anything going for them in Britain; very Jeffersonian in outlook; suspicious of government, which they viewed as a vehicle for rich, powerful people to impose their will on them (by taxing them too much and trying to take their guns away)

Welcome to the forum! Interesting post...

[memphis]

what I find interesting though is why eastern Tennessee hasn't swung dem. I know that sounds preposterous but here is my reasoning: East Tennessee is similar to Vermont in the sense that it is largely mountainous, overwhelmingly white, anti-slavery/pro-union, and opposed to the south. When the south started becoming republican by the 90s, Vermont swung to the dems. What separated an area like VT from East Tennessee, which has state republican?

Also, unlike Vermont, eastern Tennessee didn't experience a huge infusion of Jewish people from Brooklyn, NY (like Bernie Sanders, for instance).

Vermont is less than one percent Jewish. Try again.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/usjewpop.html

[I'm JewCon in name only.]

lol this thread got flipped on it's head lol.


Vermont is more comparable to Ashville, NC than it is to anything in Eastern Tennessee. Maybe even Boone, NC can be compared to Vermont, but it's got a southern feel, so idk.